you absolutely have to have the colours in the right order...

say if there was a job going that involved putting All Colours Everywhere in the right order, then i would like that job. it would have to be freelance obviously. and i would like a fancy job title. but other than that i'm pretty flexible, in fact i would probably do it for free. just for the glory.

as a kind of audition for this highly technical and important universal placement, i have made a start in our shop with all the beautiful new yarns that have just arrived. like this... 

i know. that's some pretty snazzy colour sorting going on there, i think we can all agree. if you have any links with The Powers That Be, feel free to pass on my details...  

and if you really must get married...

this here...

is our new wedding stationery display. and it serves exactly two purposes; one: it is very pretty and two: it shows our customers the kind of stationery we do in a way that doesn't just involve me making my very best 'OH THE HORROR' face when they mention glitter. or hearts. or shiny ribbon.
we have recently been taking on lots more wedding commissions, mainly because our Beautiful new printer is so very capable of printing all kinds of exciting shiz, like tags and place cards and cd covers (cd covers!) but also because ( whispers very quietly in a sheepish manner) i am getting better at talking to people who are getting married. ridiculous yes, but true. 
i'm just not a big fan of the old Formal Occasion. if you can't go to something in wellies or flip flops then i have a great deal of trouble attending at all without a paper bag to control the hyperventilating. it's not that i object to dressing up as an activity in general( but maybe say, just do it on an tuesday to cheer yourself up or because your jeans are in the wash) but i really prefer not having to do it on demand. my lovely big sister once made the mistake of making me be a bridesmaid ( i just juddered writing the word 'bridesmaid' that's how bad it is.) and i thought i did a pretty good job of smiling through it like a great big wedding faker, but i was foiled by the unfortunate fact that i have a face like a bill board. (oh i would pay much, much money for one of those calm, mysterious visages that you tend to find on icy blond women, instead of being a cartoon animation!) so as shameful as it is, all my sister's wedding photographs feature a scowling angst-ridden-rebel-without-a-cause. in a very pretty dress. 
don't get me wrong i am no cynic, i am the head cheerleader for Team Love, shaking my pom poms with all the pep available to someone born outside of the usa. but when it comes to Team Formal Occasion (particularly one that requires rehearsals!) i am likely to be found standing on my chair chanting something unpleasant. possibly swearing.
SO i may not be the world's biggest wedding fan, and my excessively expressive cartoon face means i may not be able to gush convincingly when customers talk about their plans for floral center pieces and matching fasinators. BUT what i can get excited about is stationery, yes indeed the temporary measure emporium is PRO STATIONERY. if it can be written about in a whimsical fashion and printed on card then we are fully on board.  

want to hear the story about the man who tried to take his pants off in the shop?

who doesn't like to hear a story about a man trying to take his pants off in a public place? no one i know. 


once upon a time in the temporary measure emporium on a tuesday, it being a quiet day out of season, @sycamoresykes was minding the shop by himself. and seeing as though it was near the end of the day and the only customers were an actress from the theatre and her mum, who were sat having a cup of tea, he decided to go upstairs to the workshop for a moment to 'make some frames' (go on the internet). he was disturbed from his 'frame making' by the dulcet tones of two well spoken ladies of southern origin shouting "sir! sir!" 
now this being the first time in his life that @sycamoresykes had ever been addressed as sir he speedily went to investigate. he was greeted by the sight of a middle aged man in walking attire in the process of pulling his pants down. the actress from the theatre being the lovely, well bred girl that she is and barely containing a high level state of panic was suggesting to the man that "if he needed the lavatory, it was just around the corner!" and this is the point where our hero steps in. with no thought for his personal safety or the innocence of his young eyes @sycamoresykes approached the scene demanding to know what possible reason this man had for taking his pants off in kewick's one and only temporary measure emporium. which is a fair question by anyone's standards.
the explanation provided by the potential trouser dropper was that he wasn't in fact looking for a cheap thrill but simply Needed A New Button...what a Plank.
now in the emporium these are the only kind of buttons we sell: 

pretty pretty, shiny shiny, antique ones with little to no practical purpose whatsoever, that's the kind we like. what this man required was something far more practical and preferably with a padlock. and so our hero sent him speedily on his way to the knitting shop two doors down with the following advice,
" go to the knitting shop two doors down but MAKE SURE YOU EXPLAIN TO JUNE THAT YOU NEED A BUTTON BEFORE YOU TAKE YOUR PANTS OFF!" which is good advice by anyone's standards. 


(just in case anyone is worried about june, she was fine we checked on her later...as well as being a knitter with the stature of a small child she is also a champion archer and an all round Badass. and she sold that plank a button.)  

this is how you send bears in the post...

Oh my word it has been a tense few weeks...they should have been here two weeks ago and then last tuesday, and then they were due on saturday, and then thanks to the anti-cumbrian policy of a certain courier company for whom cumbria does not exit at the weekend, they finally arrived on monday...they are now here. bear books are in the building. i can stop dreaming about them in a frantic and un healthy manner (in the last dream they arrived as self-help pamphlets full of informative hints from the nineteen fifties.) and what follows here is a day in the life style picture diary of the temporary measure team's valiant efforts to make up for the delay and get those books in the post and out to all the lovely people who pre-ordered copies. (if you printed the pictures off and flicked through them in a flick book fashion it would be like watching a strange documentary.) 


and it goes a little something like this...    

our coffee whisperer @sycamoresykes did not like posing for this picture, he is not a fan of heavy lifting. he a fan of making beautiful cappuccinos. which is why he is in the photo, my dad was unloading so fast the camera couldn't catch him...

this is me doing my Very Best Handwriting signing copies. note the disordered and mildly hazardous work space. this is why elvis has been trained not to let anyone upstairs...

this is 'the boss' at work, she also answers to 'queen of all things everywhere' or 'captain jayneway'. note the ordered worktop and precision piling. she brings order to chaos. we would be lost in space without her. my mum.

you have to sneak up on @sycamoresykes to get a picture of him. like all bearded primitives he believes photographs steal your soul...

(check out my pumpkin, spooky yes? a poll of customers concluded that it was not spooky, but was in fact a 'happy' pumpkin. what do they know. the standard of customers that day was poor.)

we took all our parcels to the post office in black bin bags. we looked like naughty santas. apologies to georgette taylor for showing her address...only send her nice things please.

and so they are on their way...if one lands on your doormat in the next day or so let us know what you think! 

i didn't mean to send the internet to coventry but i accidentally did...

is sending someone to coventry a liverpool thing? at my school if you really fell out with someone and you didn't want to speak to them then you said "i'm sending you to coventry" 

which is a very, very ridiculous thing for one small child to metaphorically send another small child to a different part of the country in order to express annoyance, but like shell suits and thundercats it made perfect sense at the time. it does make you wonder why coventry though? when they stop speaking to you in coventry do they send you to liverpool? the world is indeed full of mystery...
before i tell you something actually relevant bare with me while i just tell you this, that i was once sent to coventry by the whole school(...it was a small school). and it was because we were all having mushroom soup for lunch (it was a small school and an evil one) and i really HATE mushrooms. so i sensibly decided to use my childish wiles in order to remedy the awful situation by somehow managing to swindle a teacher, (the teachers were having tomato soup- oh it was an evil school) into swapping with me. i returned to my table feeling very proud of myself expecting the congratulations of my peers, who promptly sent me to coventry, including my own sister. human nature lesson number one, don't be a smug tomato soup bearing twat.
my point being and i do like to have a point sometimes, is that i apologize for our extremely rude internet silence. it has been for the very simple and unspectacular reason that is 'keswick in august'. keswick likes to make up for its antisocial winter behaviour by crowding all its socializing into one month during the summer. it is an endearing disagreeableness that they refer to around here as being 'seasonal'. 
our little temporary measure team is always a bit stretched at this time of year and we remember days off in the style of russian peasants remembering potatoes " do you remember that time when you had that day off...do you remember it? it was good wasn't it, that day off you had..."
we do have news though, starting with the most important first...
Elvis Shop Dog has been stripped.

oh yes the sprinkling of dog hair over unsuspecting customers is no more. elvis likes to spend his time in one of two bipolar versions of himself - the oh i am just so cute and sad and in need of your attention and you really must take a picture of me - version of himself spends his time on the balcony, attracting attention by various methods including sticking his head and/or legs through the bars in a variety of striking poses, persuasive whining, and subliminal messaging.

the second version is the Rabid Hell Hound that greets you if you happen to venture too far up the stairs, having boldly ignored the well meaning warning signs and the presence of a safety gate. he likes to be adored from afar. he does not like people who have the audacity to try and meet him in person, particularly large men in hats but also old ladies. and babies. 

what can i say, he is a prima donna. but now he is a neat and tidy prima donna who has had all his hair pulled out by an intimidatingly firm, farm dwelling cumbrian lady. he no longer leaves a trail behind him. and most importantly, in the greetings card department of the temporary measure emporium, people will no longer have to look up in the middle of a tricky greeting card decision, in order to wonder...what is that falling softly onto my head?..it feels like someone sprinkling hair...but who would sprinkle hair? and then look up to discover elvis, blinking slowly at them giving them the full on version one, and before they know it they are reaching for their cameras...suckers!  

and in other not quite so monumental news...bear books are At The Printers Now! three weeks is the delivery schedule and it is too scary. i am currently experiencing The Fear that goes by the name of 'Leaving Other People In Charge Of Important Stuff' what if they accidentally print it in shades of grey or in an early nineties pop art style? what if they remove all the vowels? what if they print the cover inside out? oh The Fear. three weeks is pretty soon though and after all the faffing and fiddling and ocd style tinkering it's about bloody time. so here is the official cover!

and finally as a way of apologizing for being a rubbish blogger and sending the internet to coventry, here is sunday evening over bass lake as a present just for you... 

  

the time when i answered all the big questions...

this here... http://dowhatyouloveforlife.com/blog/2011/06/02/do-what-you-love-interview-emma-smalley/ is a link to an interview i did for the lovely lady who runs dowhatyouloveforlife.com an organisation which encourages people to, yes indeed...do what they love for life. i think you will find that during the interview i manage to answer all the most important questions that have ever been asked while at the same time unravelling the delicate complexities of the human condition. in the process of doing this i just hope i don't sound like too much of a twonk. i hope you like it. 
this blog needs a picture so here is the picture of me and the shop that we used for the interview, in which i am distracted by a passing cyclist shouting "wow what a beautiful lady!" that last part may or may not be true... 

bears are trickier than rabbits...

so it has been a long time coming that is for certain. and the main reason for this is because of a little something that we have come to learn, and it's something that many other people have also come to learn, some in a particularly hard way involving wilderness and tents and growls in the night, and the thing that we have learned is this...

bears are trickier than rabbits...

it's true, remember it. it might come in useful one day. 
and so having learnt this valuable lesson together we now have something exciting to show you...bear book previews!!!!!!! yes we are nearly there and in celebration of our nearly thereness we thought we should show you some sneaky previews. so here they are and incase you needed to know, the last time we met the bear he was being woken up by one self assured and delightful rabbit in,

'once upon a time when i was a rabbit
and there was nothing i couldn't do...'

in our new story,

'once upon a time when i was the biggest big bear
in the whole of the wide world...'

it turns out that our big bear is quite the wonderer, so before each of the following pages you have to read out a line that goes like this...

and then sometimes i would wake and stretch and wonder if maybe just maybe...

and then sometimes i would wake and stretch and wonder if maybe just maybe...
 
and then sometimes i would wake and stretch and wonder if maybe just maybe...

and then sometimes i would wake and stretch and wonder

my most important wondering of all,

if maybe, just maybe, there was something bigger out there

in the wide world than the biggest big bear...

and that's your lot! if you would like to see any more you know the drill, it will be available on our website and in the shop as soon as we have it printed up and ready to go , which hopefully, despite the trickiness of bears and in particular biggest big bears, will be very soon indeed...